Ryanair loses top EU court fight over SAS’s pandemic aid

Ryanair Holdings Plc failed to topple the European Union’s approval for Swedish and Danish aid to SAS AB in the latest round of its attack on allegedly unfair bailouts to rival carriers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The EU’s Court of Justice dismissed the appeals in two separate rulings on Thursday. A copy of the ruling wasn’t immediately made available by the Luxembourg-based court.

Ryanair has filed more than two dozen challenges to EU approvals for pandemic aid doled out by governments to carriers, including Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Air France-KLM. A lower EU court in May toppled the EU’s approval of a €6 billion ($6.3 billion) German recapitalization for Lufthansa, which the airline is challenging. 

In Thursday’s case, Ryanair was contesting the EU’s approval to two separate aid measures pledged by Denmark and Sweden in favor of SAS — each consisting of a guarantee on a revolving credit facility of up to 1.5 billion Swedish krona ($136 million). Those measures were intended to compensate SAS in part for the damage resulting from the cancellation or rescheduling of its flights as a result of the travel restrictions imposed by governments as Covid spread across the region.

A lower EU court already ruled against Ryanair in 2021. Ryanair said at the time that these were “unfair subsidies in the interests of competition and consumers” which would “encourage inefficiency and will harm consumers for decades.”

The cases are: C-321/21 P, Ryanair v. Commission (SAS, Denmark), C-320/21 P, Ryanair v. Commission (SAS, Sweden).